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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

There comes a time when every conservative thinker tries to find some common ground with the left in some area. Today it's criminal rights and the headlines have Rand Paul denouncing the racist justice system while Grover Norquist and the Koch Brothers join with the left to back their reforms. As usually happens, the conservatives or libertarians turn out to be the useful idiots of the left.

Liberals have a long history of being the left's useful idiots. It's only fair that libertarians get a turn.

Republicans are still trying to figure out a truce on gay marriage. They retreated to civil unions, then accepted a full defeat on gay marriage and then acted baffled when Christian bakery owners were dragged into court for refusing to participate in gay weddings. When the left insisted that gay marriage was a civil rights issue, they refused to take them as their word.

Now they're wondering how an accommodation can be made with tranny rights. A brief look back at gay rights will show that the only possible accommodation is one in which men in dresses have a legal right to use the ladies room and every single closed female space and event. And yes, that means your business will be shut down if you object to Steve using the female locker room.

After a few skirmishes, some fundraising and angry letters, the accommodationists will find ways to accommodate that and we can look forward to conservative activists eagerly crowing about the first gay Republican presidential candidate around say, 2024, and the first Republican man in a dress in the Senate around the same time.

Of course by then it will be something else. Maybe pedophiles. Gay rights activists don't like the analogy, but their movement and its assorted allies, particularly in Europe's Green parties, have a long history of advocating it. The same pop culture methods that were used to sell gay rights and Bruce Jenner can easily be flipped around to sell NAMBLA.

By 2024, the Republican gay and tranny candidates will be dismissed as tokens while the media oohs and aahs over a vocal and charismatic campaigner for some other love that dare not speak its name.

And that's the point. It has always been the point.

The left does not care about gay rights. If you doubt that, consider how many of the left's favorite Muslim countries have gay rights. The left has recently divided its campaign passions between gay marriage and defending Iran. Iran denies the existence of gays and hangs them where it finds them.

The USSR treated homosexuality as a crime even while it was recruiting gay men as spies in the West. Cuba, the darling of the American left, hated both gays and blacks. The ACLU backed the police states of Communism. If the left supports an enemy nation, the odds are excellent that it is also a violently bigoted place that makes a KKK rally look like a hippie hangout.

To understand the left, you need to remember that it does not care about 99 percent of the things it claims to care about. Name a leftist cause and then find a Communist country that actually practiced it. Labor unions? Outlawed. Environmentalism? Chernobyl. The left fights all sorts of social and political battles not because it believes in them, but to radicalize, disrupt and take power.

The left does not care about social justice. It cares about power.

That is why no truce is possible with the left. Not on social issues. Not on any issues.

The left is a drunk in a bar trying to pick a fight with you. Trying to convince him that you didn't disrespect him, put something in his beer to make him dizzy or make his feet so heavy won't work. There's no 'agree to disagree' possible here. He's picking a fight with you because he wants a fight.

The left does not care about Bruce Jenner. It does not care about gay rights, equal pay, police brutality or even slavery. Its activists 'care' about those things a great deal right now, but they could easily be persuaded tomorrow to be outraged by telephone poles, shredded wheat or people in green sweaters.

They care mainly about emotional venting and exercising power over others. It's the same phenomenon witnessed during the Salem Witch Trials, the French Revolution or any other mob scene. Except the individual elements of the mob are on social media and have a hashtag.

The outraged social justice warrior was laughing at tranny jokes a few years ago. Now he's ready to kill over minor verbal missteps. A few years from now he'll be laughing at them again.

There's a long human history to such atrocities, to mobs whipping themselves up into spasms of manufactured outrage, subsuming their own doubts, confusion and unhappiness into the 'cause'.

The cause is progress, but the real cause is the power of its enforcers to vent their unhappiness and destructive impulses on everyone else under the guise of reform.

You can't find common ground with the left because it is an activist machine dedicated to destroy common ground, not only with the right, but even with its own allies on the left. Progress turns what was once progressive into what is reactionary. And what was reactionary into what is progressive.

These changes have the mad logic of a byzantine ideology behind them, but to the ordinary person their definition of progress seems entirely random.

A Socialist a century ago considered factories progressive instruments of the future and men in dresses a decadent reactionary behavior. Now factories are reactionary pollution machines of globalization and men in dresses are an oppressed victim group who have transcended biology with the power of their minds.

Republicans, conservatives, libertarians and other class enemies cannot possibly 'progress' enough to be acceptable to the left because it identifies progress with political conformity. A tolerant and progressive Republican is a contradiction in terms.

If he were truly tolerant and progressive, he wouldn't be a Republican.

The left will destroy the things you care about, because you care about them. It will destroy them because that gives them power over you. It will destroy them because these things stand in the way of its power. It will destroy them because a good deal of its militant activists need things to destroy and if they can't attack you, they'll turn on the left in a frenzy of ideologically incestuous purges.

The left's social justice program is really a wave of these purges which force their own people to hurry up and conform to whatever the Party dictated this week. Examples are made out of laggards on social media to encourage the rest to stop thinking and start marching in line. As Orwell knew well, these shifts select for mindless ideological zombies while silencing critical thinkers.

Yesterday we were against fighting Hitler. Today we're for it. Retroactively, we were always at war with Oceania. Retroactively, Bruce Jenner was always a woman. Retroactively, Obama was always right about Iraq, even when he appeared to be making the wrong decisions.

These changes are a test of reason. If you can reason, you fail. If you can Doublethink, you pass.

The constant shifts create their own version of future shock. They leave people baffled and uncertain. Society no longer seems to resemble what they knew, even though the real society of men and women has not really changed much, only the media's presentation of it has. But a beaten down mass of ordinary people now imagines that the country is filled with gay men and trannies. They accept that what they thought was common sense no longer applies and that it's someone else's country now.

And that is the prize that the left dearly wants. Surrender.

The left's media machine makes its madness seem cool even though behind all the agitating young things are a bunch of bitter old leftists. But the madness is a means, not an end. So is the facade of revolutionary cool to each shift.

The Futurists of Russia vowed to heave the past "overboard from the steamship of modernity". But when the Revolution came, the classics came back into the libraries and the Futurists were forced to stop drawing triangles and make their art conform to the conventional structure of a totalitarian state. The time of change had ended. Once the left was in power, the future became a lot like the past.

You can't accommodate the left on social issues. You can't accommodate it on fiscal issues. You can't do it. Period.

The left exists to destroy you. It does not seek to co-exist with you. Its existence would lose all meaning. Any common ground will be used to temporarily achieve a goal before the useful idiots are kicked to the curb and denounced as bigots who are holding back progress.

The purpose of power is power. The left is not seeking to achieve a set of policy goals before kicking back and having a beer. The policy goals are means of destroying societies, nations and peoples before taking over. If you allow it a policy goal, it will ram that goal down your throat. It will implement it as abusively as it can possibly can before it moves on to the next battle.

It's not about gay marriage. It's not about cakes. It's about power.

More fundamentally it's about the difference in human nature between the people who want to be left alone and those who want power over others.

You can't work out a truce with tyrants. You can give in or stand up to them. There's nothing else.

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comments:

Daniel, one of the clearest and best pieces you have ever written. It is all about power. If they don't have it then they whine and snivel for it. They get it and they are not happy until they are whining and sniveling again.....

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Daniel "Rock of Gibraltar" Greenfield. He's so right that the Left doesn't care a fig about any of the "causes" it promotes and brow-beats Americans with. It and its minions are just after power. It is out to confound ordinary Americans and accept their wearied submission. That's all.

And as Daniel stressed in another column, with the Left there is no stopping point in any of its campaigns for "social justice." It won't stop even when it's burned down your hose and sold your daughter to ISIS. It might stop when it's reduced the average American to a quivering mass of submissive protoplasm.

"More fundamentally it's about the difference in human nature between the people who want to be left alone and those who want power over others."

I've been thinking more and more about men misnamed "Anti-Federalists". What really prevented them from restraining the Constitutional Conventions was that (vis-a-vis your summation) they were of the former sort -- even to the point of not interposing themselves between the hand-basket and the people scrambling over each other to climb into it. Madison and Hamilton, of course, were of the latter sort.

Daniel is saying what the archvillain, Ellsworth Toohey, of Rand's The Fountainhead, said about the methods and ends of acquiring power for power's sake, basically to destroy values, personal and civilizational. Go here for the complete transcript. http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004FMp

You said it all here. These "progressives" don't give a damn about human rights. I once had it out on the blog of a "progressive" from Chicago who is one of the main Israel bashers in the US today. He is all for boycotting Israel. I asked him why if he boycotts Syria and other human rights abusers. He said no. I asked why. He said the "Palestinians" asked him to boycott Israel but the "Syrians" (which Syrians? Who exactly are they Syrians he consults with?) haven't. He said if they would he would supposedly be the first to boycott them but he wouldn't presume to tell them what to do. Such hypocrisy!

Exactly. The paradigm example for me is the battle with the Catholic Church. It is not about reform, it is not about victims' rights etc., it is about hatred for tradition and a desire to smear and exterminate a competing ideology.

The Church will be attacked for paedophilia because this is the most convenient weapon.... From what I understand the Church is no more prone to perversion than, say, Hollywood, the medical profession, the teaching profession, the social work "profession", other religions e.g. Islam etc. but the weapon of perversion will be used violently against one party and not at all against the others (who are pointing in the "right" direction)...

It isn't even clear that the Left is meaningfully shocked by (or even against) paedophilia anyway...

Peter J said... "The Church will be attacked for paedophilia because this is the most convenient weapon.... It isn't even clear that the Left is meaningfully shocked by (or even against) paedophilia anyway."

Correct. Today, the Church is attacked for ignoring pederasty (even though her critics dub it pedophilia to distract everyone from the data showing 95% of the abuse that took place was homosexual predation against teenage boys).

Within ten years of Anthony Kennedy's own personal Act of Supremacy issued in Obergefell, the Church will be attacked for opposing pederasty. It will be said that 'love' between men and boys is natural, deeply felt between the participants, essential to their sense of identity and dignity, and that the practice has existed throughout human history and is celebrated in certain cultures. The Church will be called cruel and unmerciful for daring to claim that pederasty cannot be genuine love.

Although my ultimate policy positions probably fairly centrist (I'm perfectly happy with same sex marriage, for instance, and probably could be pursuaded for some additional gun control measures), but you've hit on something quite right: there is *no* stopping point with the left. I have never been able to get a leftist to say, "I want the policies to be A, B, C, D and E. When we have those, I will stop." Hell, I can't get them to agree to take the weekend off if they ever to achieve a particular goal. So, reflexively, I find out what the left wants and I oppose it because I know that even if I might have common cause with them on the issue of the day, I'm pretty sure I know that I won't like the thing they want after this. And there's always a next thing.

When the assault on the family becomes too personal to ignore, the reaction will be both epic and bloody. We're getting to that point rapidly. This leftist insanity only runs so long as its effects are someone else's problem.

My answer; those who do not accept this lawless litigation need to refuse to obey it along with the other so called laws passed by this present corrupt judicial Supreme court and the Obama adm. IF we follow them then we allow them. Period. Fight , back refuse.

No you can't compromise. Just a few days after the white house went rainbow tranny illegal aliens hold a die in at the white house. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trans-and-queer-illegals-hold-die-in-at-white-house/article/2567344

They are an old type:If you ask any of them a question, he will produce, as from a quiver, sayings brief and dark, and shoot them at you; and if you inquire the reason of what he has said, you will be hit by some other new-fangled word, and will make no way with any of them, nor they with one another; their great care is, not to allow of any settled principle either in their arguments or in their minds, conceiving, as I imagine, that any such principle would be stationary; for they are at war with the stationary, and do what they can to drive it out everywhere.-- Plato

This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I understood this years ago. As Ayn Rand put it in her 1941 essay, To All Innocent Fifth Columnists,

“There is no personal neutrality in the world today.” “Repeat that and scream that to yourself. In all great issues there are only two sides — and no middle. You are alive or you are dead, but you can't be "neither" or "in between." You are honest or you are not — and there is no neutral "half-honest." And so, you are against Totalitarianism — or you are for it. There is no intellectual neutrality.”

Sometimes the choices that we must make are just that Manichean, just that black and white. There can be no neutrality when it comes to dealing with those who demand other human beings' lives as sacrifices. That ultimate evil rests on the fundamental premise of the Left that your life does not belong to you, and that you do not have the right to live as you wish. This is the underlying premise of the modern American liberal agenda. It is as clear as the bright blue sky and as different as night and day. That agenda is the road to hell.

Any economic/political/ethical system that treats people as if they were property or some sort of fungible asset is unspeakably evil – that notion hails from the dark side of human nature. We might laugh at the notion of a ‘dark side’, relegating that to mawkish science-fiction fables and dismissing it out of hand. But we would be wrong in doing so.

Any individual, institution or political entity whose ultimate argument is the barrel of a gun should and must be resisted – they’re on the dark side. Anyone who claims that the concepts of right and wrong amount to intellectual bigotry or that there is no such thing as an absolute human right to live - they’re on the dark side. Anyone who espouses a worldview whose unarguable and indisputable outcome has been the slaughter of millions and the enslavement and impoverishment of hundreds of millions more in the last century – they’re definitely on the dark side. Anyone who cheerfully advocates or participates in the murder of the most innocent of us all – the unborn – they’re on the dark side, too.

Those who believe that we can make accommodation with such monsters are whistling past the gulags, graveyards and execution pits of modern history.

Anybody who's been around since the Vietnam War should have learned it, but the Whigs in the Republican Party (McConnell, etc.) think they can make deals with them. The Libertarians side with them on most issues and then whine when they still have to pay taxes (then, of course, they throw up their hands belch (for the thousandth time, "The republic is over"), roll over and give up).

If anybody's going to save this country, it's going to be the Conservatives who understand what you just said. Thankfully, we're the only ones making babies.

One day I would like to encounter a true-believer "progressive" who says something like "yes, I am for equality for all homosexuals, transgenders,etc, I oppose capitalism, I oppose militarism,, BUT I just don't believe in human-caused global warming. It seems they simply have a checklist of all the things a good "progressive" is supposed to believe in without thinking about any of them.

The Left creates and exploits issues that can move people in their direction. The public (at any rate, 45%+ of it, consistently) seems to be so corrupted as to fall for this each and every time. This presents a challenge to honest Republican candidates and officials, who actually exist her and there.

Probably the most important single definition of Leftism is destruction. They are destroyers. They destroy everything in their path. Everything. Why? Their entire worldview is about destruction. They see the world as being full of things they and others do not have, and will never have. They champion tearing things down on behalf of others because they are crusaders acting in the projection of their own pain, wrapping it all up in the red flag of social justice. And that's bizarre, because it's antisocial, and has nothing whatsoever to do with justice. They see things that are deeply meaningful to other people that they do not appreciate, and will never appreciate. They see the joy others experience, and are consumed by their anger, rage and envy. Someone else has something they want, and "the system" prevents them from having it. They are victims, which destroys any sense of personal responsibility. They have no access to joy. They can't stand for themselves, so they can't stand others. They are consumed by what they do not have. This realization manifests as a great void in their life, reminding them of the loneliness, isolation and deep hatred that rules their lives. If they cannot have the connection to all that is human -- those things that you have and they desperately covet -- it is more empowering for them to destroy what you have than to create it themselves. That is the Left. All the vitriol amidst their crusade for "love," all the debauchery as a way to uphold "dignity," and all the decadence they display in their search for "rights" is just a smokescreen. They hate humanity. They hate themselves, you, and everyone else. They even hate their "friends," because people in such a state of desperation can't have meaningful relationships. Christoper Hitchens said "I don't have any friends." That means they view themselves and others as damaged goods, not wounded souls. Their wounds are the source of their self-loathing. And if they cannot receive or provide love to someone or create something, they are suspicious and contemptuous of, well, almost everything. The essence of Leftism is an assault on the fundamental concept of VALUE. If you cannot appreciate value, you definitionally cannot love anyone or create anything. Why do it? It's material. It's valueless. Is a bunch of atoms or cells. It's nothing. You're nothing, I'm nothing, life is nothing. It's all meaningless. If they cannot have what they most desire -- a connection to humanity, theirs and ours -- you can't have it, either. That's Leftism in a nutshell: valueless, meaningless destruction. Creation takes effort and vision. Destruction only requires the weapon you have at your disposal. It is a release. It is rage. And it exists for its own sake, because nothing else matters anyway. They hate your religion because it matters to you. They hate your house because you care for it. They hate your community because they don't belong to it. They hate the country because they don't connect with it. And that's all because of you. It's all about them, all the time. They couldn't create a workable, creative solution to anything of enduring value of you spotted them all the good people they needed and provided an unlimited budget to accomplish it. They cannot create, they can only destroy. And they know it, so the rage festers and builds, one cause they don't really care about after another. Just more activism, more protests, more tents, more drugs, more sex. Because if they had to stop and be with themselves for two minutes, they'd spontaneously combust. No, no, no... the source of all their problems is OUT THERE. There's other choice. They're trapped. Fun, huh?

Of course there can be no truce with the left. As we discussed here some time ago the driving force of the left is envy and envy cannot be sated. It can only be driven out from one's self and exposed in others. The social justice warrior merely seeks to take away what they perceive you possess in the false belief that doing so will give them what they perceive they lack. It cannot. We must seek separation from the envious. If that is not possible than we must hope the level of destruction needed to turn enough people away from their envy will not be too high.

I am reminded of an anecdote I read--here, perhaps--about a Soviet scholar who never met an actual Communist until he came to the United States. The average Russian had long ago realized that communism was only a pretext for goons to wield power. Apparently, the comrades at Berkeley missed the memo.

Agree... its a type of gaslighting to beat you down. But the gay marriage thing did have some tactical advantages... more beat down to Federalism (feds sweeping aside state regulation) and separation of powers (Kennedy dismissing the old standards limiting courts ability to create new rights). To switch gears back to the confederate flag thing.... my facebook feed was full of people claiming teaching states rights were the cause of the civil war (vs. slavery) was southern states brainwashing people... of course; when I was a kid my progressive teachers all taught the cause of the war was state rights; and not to fight slavery...

This post reminded me of a speech given by former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold during one of the major hissy fits in Wisconsin protesting Scott Walker a few years ago. Feingold said at the rally, "it's not over until we win". He expressed no interest in compromise or meeting Walker half way. Just winning. It's all about power. It's only 43 seconds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdAU5b97wYQ

Ironically, the Senate seat he lost in '10 is up for grabs again in '16. Unsurprisingly, he's running to unseat Ron Johnson and he's currently leading in the polls. I don't understand how anyone can look at the misery and devastation of the 20th century and willingly vote for leftists. About half the country apparently are idiots.

The Constitution of the United States is lying tattered in the gutter. Which candidate for president in 2016 is going to lean down and pick it up? (Thanks to Napoleon Bonaparte for the paraphrased quotation and Red State for bringing this metaphor to my attention.

From NPR On The Media for Aug. 7, 2009: http://www.onthemedia.org/story/132459-everyones-favorite-radical/transcript/

RYAN LIZZA: [of the New Yorker]

But the ideas behind community organizing are the opposite of idealistic. There’s a famous story. Whenever Alinsky would have a new student coming to organize, he would ask them, why do you want to be an organizer, and they would always say, well, I want to help others, you know, I want to devote my life to doing good. And he would scream back at them, no, you want to organize for power.

Obama’s organizing buddy shared with me a manual that was very similar to the one that Obama used to train as an organizer, and in it, it said, we are not virtuous by not wanting power. We are really cowards for not wanting power because power is good and powerlessness is evil. This is the first concept you learn as a community organizer and the first concept that Obama learned when he got to Chicago and learned to be a community organizer.

Let me recommend "The Righteous Mind" by Haidt for a comparative view of the moral beliefs and structures of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. His social science techniques identified 7 main moral values. Conservatives had to balance acceptance of all 7 in making moral judgements and taking moral positions. Liberals only used two thereby making for a much more narrow moral worldview. Libertarians also held only 2 but a different 2 than liberals.

He doesn't address power as a motivation but he certainly explains the view liberals hold that conservatives are evil - which also supports the reverse view that liberals are stupid.

I agree there's no compromise or truce with the Left. But, I think we (conservatives and really anyone not batsh*t crazy Left) could be smarter in fighting them. Suppose some things were taken off the table, for example. I'm attracted to Rand Paul's privatization of marriage. And, yes, I know, it could get more complicated, but I think conservatives are signing up to be the losing team occasionally when they don't have to play the game at all. So, we get bloodied for defending having the government involved in a definition of marriage, when we could just say, hey, there is no government involvement at all. You get whatever congregation you can get to say you're married, fine. You don't get to tell us what to do in our Catholic parish.

Scott Ott said this much more coherently and elegantly on PJ Media today - see vodka pundit for the Trifecta on July 1 - I thought he made some very good points.

This hysteria leading to the banning of the Confederate flag which brings about absurdities such as the banning of the Dukes of Hazzard are typical of movements and states with totalitarian mentalities. The public is continually stirred up with artificial crisis in order to force people to make public declarations of loyalty to the ruling totalitarian power. George Orwell showed an example of this in his novel "1984" with the "Two minutes hate" in which crowds were stirred to hysteria about the "enemy of the people" Emmanuel Goldstein (note Orwell used a Jewish name because he wanted to illustrate how these totalitarians have an antisemitic subtext to their campaign in order to exploit antisemitic feelings in the public to further discredit the regime's enemy).In this case "enemy" politicians (i.e. Republicans or other enemy conservatives) are then forced to make a public statement that, no matter what they say, puts them in a bad situation....if you think the public is overreacting then you are branded a racist and if you say you support banning the flag you end up alienating those who don't want to ban it.An earlier example was the hysteria over the name of the Washington Redskins. Of course, the "progressive" President has to enter the fray, and the Washington Post, a supposedly sober, serious newspaper had an editorial piece written by an American Indian where he stated the ALL the problems the Indians face today (high suicide rate, alcholism, drug abuse, high unemployment,etc) are due to the team being named this. This causes a loss of self-esteem which then brings about all the social pathologies listed above. This is so preposterous I don't know whether to laugh or cry that this newspaper would run such nonsense. Somehow the owner of the team toughed it out and refused to bow to the pressure, and the noise about it has died out, at least for the time being.However, we should all be aware of this totalitarian trick to mobilize the masses to do their bidding and we should not fall into their trap.

Please translate this article into Hebrew - a similar battle is brewing, with many traditional/religious people still believing that "the facts are settled" and the Left still has good intent... and we don't even have a Constitution or Bill of Rights, as you know.

"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."

"We are what we repeatedly do. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. Moral excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

- Aristotle

"It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there is service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be master." - Ayn Rand

“When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.” - Ayn Rand

"There is a morality of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man's Life is its standard of value." - Ayn Rand

This is the best article that I have read in a long time. In order to fight our enemy, we need to understand them better than they understand us. I think conservative writers should do much more of this (i.e., understanding the base motives of our adversaries) rather than simply reacting to the latest stupidity from the Left. We have been loosing the war with the left for about 100 years (since Wilson). We really need to get a new set of tactics and strategies for dealing with them. Maybe we can start by understanding what this article articulates (i.e., its not about the issue).

BTW, there is an interesting blogger out there who talks about liberals from an EvoPsych perspective. I think his stuff is interesting (no judgements as to whether it would stand up to peer review type scientific scrutiny). His site is: http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/ . (Note: I am not affiliated in any way with him)

Quoting Plato in this context is like a Cuban freedom fighter quoting Marx.

"The best ordered state will be one in which the largest number of persons ... most nearly resembles a single person. The first and highest form of the State ... is a condition in which the private and the individual is altogether banished from life, and things which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become common, and in some way see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise and blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasion, and whatever laws there are unite the city to the utmost ..." (Plato's _Republic_ & _Laws_ c. 370 BCE)

If you haven't looked at it, you need to read the book Constitution 2020: http://www.constitution2020.org/about. This has been out for awhile, and some writers included in it are close to Obama.

I would caution about criticizing those who are fighting for reform of the justice system however. There are some very serious issues there that have gone unnoticed by our side of the aisle for a long time that dovetail with other movements we're witnessing now. It isn't being a useful idiot to point that out. In fact, it seems strange that it is assumed that nearly every institution of our society has been infiltrated by the left...except the police/DAs. Usually we have realized the judiciary has been compromised a long time ago. This ruling is particularly troubling: http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/pottawattamie-county-v-mcghee/. The implications of what it means needs to be considered, because it's quite a legal weapon against anyone.

No. It'll be pedophilia. The same revision of the DSM that normalized trannies normalized pedophilia. Google "Jacob's Journey" and marvel at the sudden proliferation of human interest stories promoting the practice of transitioning three, four and five year-old children into the opposite of their biological gender. Soon there will be a criminal case in which a teacher or guidance councellor observes a six year-old playing with the 'wrong' toys at recess and when the parents refuse the suggestion to put their child on hormone-blockers, DCFS is called in to intervene. Once the high court decides against the parents, it will barely be necessary to ask the question aloud, "if a six year old is responsible to choose their gender, why not their sexual partners?"

Pedophiles have innate mental differences which can be observed in fMRI scans. They have a high suicide rate. These are each the primary claims made towards the legitimacy and victimhood of trannies.the architecture is already in place for this.

Seeing & reading the many commentaries, you did touch a raw nerve with this essay on the left! Apparently it starts to dawn on ever more of your readers that the left is out on the total destruction of all the good that America stood and still stands for.The cycle of the government rule by the unDemocrats has to be broken.

im not against gay partnerships, or equal rights. it's how they orchestated it, which is revealing. it has turned into a circus pony act. how do gay or black rights have to do w/special order cakes? again the far left has found another group of useful idiots.

This is why I oppose all further gun control proposals. The Left will not rest until it disarms citizens. And they have demonstrated Greenfiields principle: they are never satisfied, they never stop. One "reasonable" gun control law will lead to amother, until nothing is left.

I'm typically not alarmist, but I'm also not blind. As a student of history I can see where this seems to be heading. In many ways, it's remindful of the early days of the National Socialists in Europe, when similar tactics were used to silence dissent, punish political enemies, and usher in groupthink with the help of useful idiots who didn't grasp what was going on until it was too late. We're at the stage where their symbols and flags are being used to sweep aside any culture, history, religion, or symbol they don't agree with or which they perceive stands in their way. The Orwellian "equal" sign is fast becoming the swastika of the New Fascists, and the rainbow flag of so-called tolerance, inclusion, and equality (see: Newspeak) is in reality becoming the banner of oppression as we goosestep toward totalitarianism. Anyone who dares to disagree is shouted down, vilified, and their livelihoods threatened or ruined. Any vote they lose, they petition a court to order it done in spite of the expressed will of the people at the ballot box. If you're not with them "you're on the wrong side of history" they say, which is chillingly the words of those of the Nazi movement in the early days of the "Thousand Year Reich".

Meanwhile, the other side resembles nothing so much Neville Chamberlain, trying to appease the unappeasable, foolishly hoping each concession will finally be the one that satisfies the Nazis and stops their onward march.

This is being done to me right now -- the trainer at the gym, whom I've worked with one on one for several months, just shot me a message demanding to know that I think about homosexual "marriage." He knows I'm a Christian. He's heard me talk about gay friends. I saw him the day the monstrous decree was handed down, and I was heartsick about that: open season on Christians.

So even though I've always tactfully stayed out of the culture war arena, heck, I'm there to WORK OUT, not get into a mud wrestling match -- he's now demanding that I endorse his choice or be "outed" as a bigot to the whole gym.

Also, this guy has an "open marriage," which is NOT a marriage of any kind worth recognizing, even between one man and one woman.

The threat is unspoken but real. I've already paid for the sessions. I have about half a dozen left. Any ideas?

Well done, as always. You wrote something many months ago along the same lines and it rings as true today as it did then. I have no particular insight to add other than this: when things get "real" (and they will) I wouldn't trust any of the hand-wringing, equivocating people in the "middle" any more than I would trust a far-Leftist.

I'm ignoring his email, Daniel (who knows, maybe he was drunk). But this is what he said: "As you know the Supreme Court made a ruling on Friday that I was quite elated by. You were my first client that I got a chance to share the experience with and the subject was quickly changed. This leads me to my question… How do you feel about my right to marry a man?Or “Gay” marriage?"

He's making a demand, that I tell him what my beliefs are (he already knows I'm a Christian [Episcopal], which is why he's harassing me), with an implicit threat. I've tactfully declined to get into a cage match with him, but I will NOT deny my faith.

And may I just say -- you have cut to the heart of the matter. Ann Coulter was right, the Left are demonic.

An old friend of mine made a very good observation: "People don't always hate you for what's bad about you. Quite often, they hate you for what's good about you.

Whittaker Chambers (converted from Communist to Quaker) said the Leftists are in the grip of the oldest temptation of all: "Ye shall be as gods."

Lastly, if you haven't read Victor Klemperer's I Will Bear Witness, do. He was a Jewish professor living in Dresden, and the published diary starts with the ominous words: "Hitler Chancellor." And records the ever tightening noose, the ever escalating humiliations, of the National Socialist regime -- the increasing pressures to conform, the open persecution of anyone engaging in open resistance (Donald Trump, anyone? "pour encourager les autres," as the French admiral said); the terror that took hold of everyone in a matter of months, as if a great flail were whirling above their heads, and anyone who stuck their head up would have it struck off....

Most striking is how fast it all happened. All it takes is a group of people who are ruthless enough and power-mad enough. That's what's scary.

Civilization, the monster in the White House has revealed to our sorrow, really is a gentlemen's agreement. Didn't John Adams warn us about that?

In our world, there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. The sex instinct will be eradicated. We shall abolish the orgasm. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty to the party, but always there will be the intoxication of power. Always at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever. The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one. Don’t let it happen. It depends on you.

The best part about the whole "gay mariage decision" is that it almost totally obliterates the entire womens lib shtick. Heh. Who cares? I certainly don't. I have always believed anyone could live their own life in any manner they chose no matter how deviant. As long as they don't require me to approve of it! That is the true meaning of freedom.

Does your trainer know that the Episcopal "church" just voted to have same-sex marriage? Are you aware of that? It is time to get out of the Episcopal organization. Contact the Anglican Church in North America. The Episcopal "church" has been taken over by the left. To remain with them is to side with them.

This is a brilliant post! I'm from South Africa and we ignored this view 20 or so years ago and are reaping the fruit. This left-wing government is a champion of all the "causes" but it's staunch friends are the worst perpetrators of human rights abuse and atrocities. Examples are Cuba, Zimbabwe, China, Sudan ad nauseum. Fortunately there is a strong middle right gathering of likeminded souls of all races who are pioneering a new way!

Obama could have done a lot of good for his 'sons' and Holder's 'people' - but instead, they both have done nothing but evil, perpetuating obscenity, bastardy, death, disease, drugs, division, anger, crime and corruption among black Americans.

What Obama, Holder, the Black Caucus and black supremacist, black muslim activists, et al have done and continue to do is destructive, deadly and utterly despicable.

Baltimore, Detroit and other Democrat, black-led communities are in ruins due to their corruption and exploitation.

Great Reading- Thanks.Here is something that was written 60 odd years ago on Power. You may find it tracks your views on Liberals

Love and Power. –Flight from Women Karl Stern (1965) (due to the 4000 character limit- Here is a mouthful)

Now if one took the trouble, one could demonstrate that every single conflict we touched upon in the preceding essays can be reduced to one fundamental pair Love and Power. Love and Power as a moral antithesis are at work inside every human being, regardless of sex. Love and power is the polarity of all human relationships. All relationships between human beings can be reduced to one of these two, and all moral conflicts arise out of a tension between the two. All true love for another means a renunciation-painful or effortless, conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional-of power. (Inversely, all power over another is an impairment of love.) The reader may distrust such an axiom. At times the antithesis is disguised beyond recognition: there are clinging forms of love which mask possessiveness; there is a form of authority, in fact all true authority, which resembles power but is based on love. All power, for power's sake, is habit-forming. The phenomenology of power and the phenomenology of addiction show remarkable parallels. An addict gets to know an experience of euphoria, an extraordinary sense of wellbeing, at his first acquaintance with the drug. As he wants to renew the experience he will soon have to take a greater quantity. But the pattern changes; the addict without the drug is not just a normal being without a sense of happiness: he is in distress. And soon it is this distress which dominates his life. The drug is no longer needed to produce bliss: it has to be taken for a merely negative purpose-namely to escape misery. The amount of drug necessary to ward off misery increases with an inexorable law. Our man is by now a vessel with a leaking bottom; no matter how much he takes, he needs still more. Then a shuffling occurs in the hierarchy of appetites; the need for the drug is more imperious than the vital instincts, hunger, thirst or sexual desire. And there is a shuffling in the moral sphere. The need is such that any degree of deceit, any form of crime has to be committed to obtain the drug. In the end, taking the drug is no longer just a matter of avoiding distress and misery-the days of bliss being long past-but a mere avoidance of collapse and, in many cases, of death.

For your edification and enjoyment: Day by Day cartoon dated 07/13/2014

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/comic/the-pits-3/

The money quote: "... the Left WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE. EVER. {...} the literal history of the left is they will not stop until you are kneeling at the edge of a pit with a gun at the back of your neck."

Once we understand this --that War has already been declared, that it's already being fought AGAINST US RIGHT NOW-- we'll realize that standing on the sidelines hoping to remain uninvolved is the one sure way to LOSE that war.

Watch Willy Wonka - the left is Veruca Salt. Bitching, whining, "I want." It is not about the thing, it is never about the thing. I don't even think it is actually about power, it is about attention. Getting it, being seen as the conquering hero. These are all about people wanting to be the stars of their own story. Not content to take what life gives them. Problem is we are far to comfortable in life, but someone must always play the villain for someone else (them) to be the hero. Who can be the villain this week? Something is demonized so that someone else can slay the dragon.

Narcissism. It is all just narcissism. And it is increasing perversely because we have allowed certain message to creep into our culture. "Follow your dreams." has replaced "do your duty."

Answer him. He may be handing this to you on a silver platter. If he flips out and refuses you service, well, his business is what is called in civil rights law a public accommodation and he's refusing service based on your religious identity. Even better, by doing it through email, he's leaving a paper trail.

At the very least, if he refuses service and denies a refund, you might be able to put a lien on him,

And the absolute least consequence of you giving a straightforward answer would be, as you say, a half-dozen uncomfortable sessions.Perhaps he'll press you into further dialogue and perhaps this dialogue might result in a softening of his militant, anti-pluralistic posture. And you wouldn't be denying your identity as a Christian.

Well you are CLIENT to that gym, if your homo personal trainer is behaving in a bigoted way towards A PAYING CUSTOMER, simply report him to the gym owners/managers, making a point that you feel harassed and want your money back. Either scenario is a win-win situation for you. If the managers are pro-homo you make a fuss and leave (why would you want to give money to those assholes?), if the managers step in and threaten to fire the homo trainer you would be vindicated. Why you are making it so more difficult than it is? I wouldn't want to have a gay personal trainer and that would be as a man or a woman.

To Y Ben David above, whose lefty friend said he boycotted Israel because the Palestinians asked him to, but he didn't boycott Syria, because no Syrians asked him to ... it would be good if Gays from Iran wrote to NPR and whoever - or had paid ads in major papers and said - boycott Iran because they are persecuting us - and every other equivalent persecuted group that the hypocritical leftists ignore.

Hi Anonymous...be careful...the only St. Alban's in NYC I found on Google was still part of the Episcopal "Church." To clarify - the Episcopal Church was the original Anglican church in the United States. It has been completely taken over by leftists. You do not want to go there!

The orthodox Christians who left the Episcopal Church founded the Anglican Church in North America. The Anglican "Communion" is the worldwide Anglican organization, of which the Episcopal Church is still a part. The Anglican Communion is NOT the Anglican Church in North America.

So...you'll want to find an orthodox Anglican Church that is aligned with the Anglican Church in North America (or a few smaller orthodox Anglican groups). If you go to the ACNA website, they have a church finder. There are a number of options in NYC, but St. Albans is not one of them.

I hope that clarifies things. I'd hate for you to step into an Episcopal "Church" expecting to meet conservatives and be overwhelmed by progressive leftists. That was not my intent in providing that information earlier. Sorry for any confusion!

I strongly believe that Islam is going to be the stumbling block to the Left. The Left made a huge mistake when it began to support Islam. You know, as Islam spreads throughout the world, it will carry out more and more crimes against gays, women and religious minorities. Since all of them are groups that the Left claims to defend, it must make a choice. Defending human rights or defending Islam. It can claim convincingly to do both only for limited amount of time. If the Left refuses to choose its side, or if it chooses Islam, then its mask will fall off, revealing an ugly truth and maybe (hopefully) that will be the end of the totalitarian Left in America.

The left despise religion, so the only people victims of Islam will be gays and women. Islam is not even a religion, it's a totalitarian political system. I can see the cowards of the left to convert en-masse and turn against their once protected minorities (the left does not protect Buddhism or Taoism, otherwise they would say something about many parts of Asia once being multi-religious and now Sharia-based). So they do not care about religious minorities, they pretended to care about women and gays and at this point let nature rectify this idiocy. First watch it in Norway and the Netherlands. The rise to power of Islam will not be via the sword, but simply via the normal political process. Gay marriage will be overturned by sharia laws.

What you write about the left is true, especially the leaders (soccer moms, maybe not so much). Unfortunately, it is also true of the right (again, the leaders). Some people grab for that ring of power and nothing else matters to them, including what label they put on themselves.

The answer is Panarchy. Let socialists be socialists; let conservatives be conservatives, let anarchists be anarchists, and so forth. Certainly almost none of these tendencies will be satisfied to stay within their own little boundaries, so that each of them will need a credible defensive posture. But if some individual wants to live in a different system from the system you prefer, what right have you to stop him, as long as he leaves you be? It's none of your business, even if you think he's an idiot.

if the nefarious effects of leftist policies had affected themselves only, I would have no problem. Usually their righteous smug attitude make them believe they are entitled to enlighten the rubes. And the trick is that they are not interested in applying their own standards and laws to themselves, see the rampant lying and tax evasion in the democratic party. If they are so enamoured with high taxes, why they do not pay them? The left cannot survive without an oligarchy-like system where they get to be exempted from the very laws they support. I have a friend that lived under communism in the 60-70-80s and she was the daughter of a powerful man in the commie party. Of course if you ask her, she had very minimal problems beside listening to the propaganda (that she knew were bullshits), applaud some high rank party member's speech (that she found idiotic) and not being able to leave the country to travel for leisure. Other than that, her father's status guaranteed her a life that was not the one shared by the other 'peasants'. She agrees that Stalin was crazy and the system was corrupted to the core, but she was part of a small elite that was spared the hardships of queuing for bread. The same is for any person in the circle of powerful elites in any dictatorship, military juntas etc. They are not demanded to adapt to the low standards of the rest of the population.

- So you resort to the slippery slope fallacy. Classical. Hey, maybe you haven't noticed this, but same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada for over a decade now and no one is pushing for bestiality.

- So actually addressing problems is a bad thing to you. I couldn't write satire as undermining as this.

- I love how you conveniently forget that the right also changed it's definitions and also alienates allies as "degenrates" and "sjws"

Briefly, it's odd that we have a far left, far right, which belies the basic duality of the universe. I have enjoyed telling people that the Nazis are left, all baddies are on the left, youre either a control freak or youre free, and the far right a myth because it does not gel with universally understood principals of electromagnetism. But there's more going on somehow and we sense this intuitively and that's because as men and women respectively, we automatically step it down and so we're also confused by the levels. You're smart enough and Jewish enough and man enough to lay this out on your own, but my early thoughts are that the feminine is damaged and it's not okay to stuff the planet over for example, and then blame leftists for behaving insanely about climate change. Which they do, of course, but it doesn't change the fact that we have run roughshod over the planet, our home. I wonder whether monarchical excesses couldn't have been viewed as strictly level one right abuses, but in democracy we don't get too much of that anymore though it may be said that true governing power has been just as damaged as the left by our democratic experiment at this stage as we see it incapable of defending itself from totalitarianism. And if we do beat it, and we will, it will be as berserkers, not civilised people and we will become what we oppose anyhow. Level two would be a bit more complicated but as a woman, I should be healthy left and men healthy right, with abilities to move both ways but then I get confused and I can't wrap my female mind around this~ But clearly the levels are mixed up. All the leftie spiritual gurus and calling for love and prayer to save the world. When I tell them we need strength, mental and spiritual, I draw blanks. We need spiritual teachers to start talking strength to all the loving liberal lambs who feel sorry for everyone and expose their lovely necks.